BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
CaMBRIDGE, Massacnusetts, NoveMBER 10, 1943 VoL. 11, No. 5 
AFRICAN ORCHIDS. XIII 
BY 
V.S. SUMMERHAYES 
(Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) 
THE LEAFLESS ANGRAECOID ORCHIDS 
LEAFLESS MEMBERS of the large group of Monopodial 
Orchids are found in all the main tropical regions, for 
example, the genus Taeniophyllum Bl. in Indo-Malaya 
and the genera Campylocentrum Benth. and Dendrophy- 
lav Reichb.f. in tropical America. In Africa, including 
the Mascarene Islands in the broad sense, such orchids 
have generally been looked upon, probably correctly, as 
leafless representatives of the large group of Angraecoid 
orchids characteristic of that continent. 
Until now all these leafless plants have either been 
placed in one genus or have been allocated to the various 
aggregate genera Angraecum Thouars, Listrostachys 
Reichb.f. and Rhaphidorrhynchus Finet according to the 
views of the authors dealing with them. The earliest dis- 
tinct generic name for any leafless African monopodial 
orchid is Gussonea proposed by A. Richard in 1828 for 
Angraecum aphyllum Thouars (in Mém. Soc. Hist. Nat. 
Paris 4 (1828) 67). This name was afterwards adopted 
by Ridley (in Journ. Linn. Soc. Lond. Bot. 21 (1885) 
391) who transferred several species from other genera 
and described some new ones. More recently Schlechter 
(in Beih. Bot. Centralbl. 86, Abt. 2 (1918) 89-94) also 
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